I'm sorry the pictures in my analysis will not show up. So I added them as their own post not cropped. As you can tell I'm no professional blogger. I am so sorry, thank you for understanding.

The Design of the ACSM website

Designing the ACSM

                Any person that falls under the umbrella of professionals in sports medicine field know what the American College of Sports Medicine is. Through a rhetorical analysis of the webpage home, I analyzed how effectively and easily the website gets its information across for the viewer. The viewer would mostly be ACSM members or future ACSM members, but since it is a webpage accessible to all with internet; anyone that stumbles on to the page can see it. The main purpose is informing and updating the people about sports medicine is a great way to make people see how it effects their lives. A well-done rhetorical analysis will include ethos, logos, and pathos. In addition, an analysis should include how the text and visual work together. The website overall was well designed and organized to appeal to the audience of the ACSM website and fulfill its purpose of informing and updating the public.

The professionalism of the webpage shows the credibility. The webpage is very organized and well thought out. It follows the social norms of a webpage for an organization. Some of the social norms are having changing pictures with text and links to grab attention and provide basic information with the thirst for more. Another social norm would be to have the logo at the top left; this also shows that this website is for a registered organization. The designers for ACSM followed this social norm shown in this picture.

   Fig. 1. 2014. Matrix Group International, Inc., Web. <http://www.acsm.org/>

As show in Fig. 1, they have their logo in the top left showing that they are a real organization. A social norm is also to have links to social media sites. The organization of the webpage is very professional. The changing pictures with the logo and links to navigate the webpage, more information under that. Side information and login off to the side and out of the way. Putting the link to the designer’s web site at the bottom of the ACSM. This shows that some crazy person in a basement did just not make the webpage, but that a company hired a designer to create a professional and organized webpage.

Everything on the webpage made the way it was with logic and purpose behind it. A lot of the webpage follows social norms of webpages today, which is like that, not to copy everyone else, but to show that it is professional and follows the standards of other professional organization. That is one of the strengths of the webpage and that it can easily be navigate through the many different links. Even the average Joe that is only maybe looking for an article on why after he picked up running his shin started hurting. They have a link made for the average person just looking for an article or information, called public information. This also shows that the webpage is more for members because it makes it seems as though that is link for anyone, but the other ones should be members or future members. That is a weakness, because it could scare away average people from using the page. The purpose of the page is to give out information about sports medicine and scaring away curious people is going against the purpose of the page.

The designer of the webpage tried bringing out the audience’s emotions at different times. All the changing pictures and minimal text is there to grab attention and then make the reader curious to find more information on the picture. The latest news story titles are supposed to bring out our curiosity and the need to stay up to date with the constantly changing medical field. This makes us feel curious and want to read the article and to learn more about the importance of sports medicine. Unlike some organizations looking for donations, that show sad pictures that make people feel guilty, this webpage is strictly for science and curiosity to learn.

How the text and visual work together

For the webpage to be effective, the text needs to work with the visuals. The predominant focus is first on the visual, but it then changes to mainly text. On the website’s homepage, there are really only four visuals. The First visual and text would be the four changing pictures with text and links. They complement each other well because the pictures are helping to grab attention of the reader and representing the text. The text is supposed to make the reader want to know more and follow the link. The visuals help show a preview of what the text is and what that particular event will be. The visual tells you more in a simple way what it is. For example the picture about the conference, has smaller pictures of science images to help people see that it will be a scientific conference giving out information. The visual is the background to the text. The text would be boring and uninteresting and lose a lot of its audience to other less important parts of the webpage without the visuals. There is two smaller visuals, one being the symbol in the logo and the picture of the book. The symbol as shown in fig. 1 helps to associate the symbol with the name so that the symbol could be more recognizable. That is why they put the symbol first then the organization name. The other visual is a small picture of the featured publication.

  Fig. 2. 2014. Matrix Group International, Inc., Web. <http://www.acsm.org/>

In fig. 2, the designer just starts to describe the book, but then has a read more link. This makes the reader curious about the book and want to follow the link to read more and possibly buy the book. They also put the picture there to grab attention and to help the reader know what it looks like, so they can recognize the book. Altogether, even though there are only a handful of visuals on the webpage those visuals work well with the text it goes with.

After my rhetorical analysis of the American College of Sports and Medicine, I can confidently conclude the website overall was organized and designed appealing to the viewers of the ACSM website and fulfill its purpose of informing and updating the public. The purpose of the webpage is still mainly to inform and update people, but also make people curious about sport and exercise science. At first, I thought the audience was mainly ACSM members and future ACSM members, but now I see that it is also for the average person curious about sports medicine. This is just a basic, organized, and professional webpage that follows the social norm for webpages today, but it is effective at getting the information across and making people curious about the information. Overall the techniques used by the designer all had purpose and audience in mind to make the webpage successful.

                                                                                     Work Cited         

2014. Matrix Group International, Inc., Web. <http://www.acsm.org/>